Thankfully the rain of the previous day had yet to reappear as Inspector Tovey drove us towards Wapping, although ominous storm clouds were already brewing on the horizon.
I sat up front in the passenger seat, while Holmes watched the streets of the capital speed by from the back. We drove in silence, until Tovey picked up on one of Holmes’s earlier comments.
“So, what did you mean about personal experience of the trenches, Mr Holmes?”
My friend ignored the question.
“I mean,” Tovey continued, pressing the point, “forgive me for saying, but neither of you are of the age to serve on the front line. Unless, Doctor, you were there in your medical capacity?”
Before I could respond, Holmes’s sharp voice rang out from the back seat. “As I am sure you are aware, Inspector, much of what happened during the war remains shrouded in secrecy, for the sake of national security. I would ask you to put my momentary lapse of discretion down to the excitement of the case and never mention it again.”
Tovey mumbled an apology and the car fell into an awkward silence, as far removed from our jovial breakfast earlier that day as London is from the fields of northern France.
Of course, Holmes was correct. Both he and I had been employed by the state on numerous occasions during the war years, serving our country here and abroad. While I was obviously glad to do it, the distressing events I witnessed will haunt me for the rest of my days, far worse even than my experiences in Afghanistan. Fortunately, my involvement was limited to half a dozen cases or so. As for Holmes, even I had no idea of the extent of his wartime service.
The subject had arisen not a few days earlier, when I suggested that Holmes had played a significant role in the defence of our realm.
“I merely played my part, Watson,” he said, “as any Englishman would. The true glory, if one can use such a word, belongs to those brave men who sacrificed their future for ours.”
I had let the subject drop then, as Tovey did now. Thankfully, when we pulled up on Wapping High Street, the atmosphere between the two men lifted as we lost ourselves in the mystery once again.
“This way,” said Holmes, leading us down a narrow alleyway between the Hoop and Grapes public house and the walls of a rag and bone yard. We emerged on the banks of the Thames to find that the tide was thankfully out, silt sloping down to the water’s edge.
“Here we are,” said Tovey, making his way along an uneven pathway to our right. He pointed to a faded sign that hung from a redbrick building on the river’s edge.
ROUD AND COMPANY,
DYE AND PIGMENT MANUFACTURERS
Marching up to the large green doors, the inspector tried a handle only to find the place locked. Cupping one of his hands, he tried to peer through the grimy windows, but it was obvious the factory was empty.
He stepped back onto the walkway of uneven planks and looked up at the dilapidated sign. “You would think they might at least give it a new coat of paint. Not the finest advertisement for their wares, is it?”
Holmes, meanwhile, was examining the clay beneath his feet. It was undoubtedly the same shade as the muck he had found beneath the fingernail of the hand.
“The pigment industry in this country has floundered of late,” Holmes said, wiping his hand on a handkerchief. “Meanwhile, it has positively flourished on the continent, specifically in Germany.” He returned the now mud-smeared cloth to his pocket. “Where do you think the military had to go to buy the khaki pigment needed for British Army uniforms at the beginning of hostilities?”
“Nothing surprises me any more,” Tovey commented. “Where now? The place is shut up.”
I surveyed the stretch of riverbank before us. Most of the buildings were in the same sorry state, many seemingly abandoned if the broken windows and boarded-up doorways were anything to go by. Peace might have been restored, but the country was still suffering, many industries unable to man their workshops and factories, while injured and disenfranchised servicemen huddled unemployed beneath railway bridges. My mind wandered back to those young people dancing with such abandon back at the Mallard Club. Maybe Holmes was right. Maybe you couldn’t blame them for seeking escapism when the real world was so resolutely bleak.
Holmes was also looking up and down the river. I followed his gaze, my eyes resting on another crumbling pile along the bank, its windows without glass and signage long gone. All except for one architectural feature that caught my attention.
“Holmes,” said I. “That building there…” I was already marching down the pathway, the boards shifting beneath my weight.
“What of it?” Tovey asked, following me along the bank. Holmes was matching me step for step and had clearly noticed the same thing.
Above the doorway, chiselled into a large stone, was a long serpent wound around a staff.
“The Rod of Asclepius,” I said, stopping in front of the building.
“A place of medicine,” agreed Holmes, stooping down to retrieve what at first looked like a length of driftwood, but on closer examination was revealed to be part of an old noticeboard. Holmes’s handkerchief was out again in a flash, this time rubbing a thin layer of grime from the wood to reveal long-obscured words.
“Abberton Hospital,” I read over his shoulder. “Have you ever heard of it?”
“Not before now,” Holmes admitted, “although by its current state, that is hardly surprising. It looks as if it has lain derelict for decades, although bearing in mind the marks on Pike’s wrist bones…”
“A surgical saw,” Tovey chimed in. “But surely no one would be operating in a place like this?”
Holmes regarded the squat building, which in days gone by would have tended those who worked in the surrounding factories. “You would think not. However…”
He thrust the filthy piece of wood into my hands and bent to examine what little could be seen of the step beneath the hospital’s heavy double doors.
“There’s a footprint,” he declared, “or at least half of one, poking out from beneath the doors. Do you see, Watson?”
I replied in the positive, and marvelled that it had not been washed away by yesterday’s rain. Holmes pointed at the stone ledge that extended above our heads.
“The porch would have offered at least some shelter. But details, Watson. Details.”
At first I was puzzled by his remarks, wondering what else I was expected to notice, when my eyes widened. “It’s covered by the door!”
“Meaning that the door must have been opened recently to allow whoever passed this way to leave a mark,” confirmed Holmes. He stood, trying the doors themselves. Like those of the factory, they were locked shut.
“Do you still carry a set of skeleton keys to go with your magnifying glass?” I asked, not relishing the idea of scrambling through any of the windows.
With a snort of frustration, Holmes slapped his palm against the all-too-sturdy wood of the door. “Watson, you appal me. I am an apiarist, not a housebreaker. Besides, I foolishly left them in my suitcase.”
“Then perhaps I can be of assistance?” cut in Tovey, producing a small leather pouch from his breast pocket. “If you gentlemen would give me a little room.”
“Gladly,” smiled Holmes, gently pulling me aside.
Tovey knelt, and, opening the wallet, extracted a small penknife and a single lever pick. His tools in hand, the inspector went to work, inserting the blade into the keyhole. Listening to rather than looking at the lock, he manipulated the knife, easing it up within the casing. I knew enough of such practices from my time with Holmes to imagine that he was trying to raise the bolt within the mechanism. Satisfied that the knife was in position, it was in with the lever pick. Stepping to the side to get a better look, I was amused to see the pink tip of the inspector’s tongue poking out of the side of his mouth, in the same manner as a child concentrating on a drawing. There was nothing infantile about the man’s dexterity, however, those thick fingers gently easing the pick into the workings, searching for the correct groove, before with a satisfying click the bolt gave way.
“Bravo,” remarked Holmes, rewarding the inspector with a sotto round of applause. “Expertly done, Inspector. I couldn’t have managed better myself.”
“And you a bloodhound of the law,” I remarked, offering the large man a hand as he hauled himself back up to his feet.
“I wasn’t always a policeman,” Tovey replied enigmatically, pocketing his tools before trying the door once again. It swung open with remarkable ease, emitting barely a squeak of rusty metal. Inspector Tovey ran his index finger across the hinges.
“Oiled,” he reported, rubbing the tip of his now slick and blackened finger against his thumb. “And recently too.”
“And here is the rest of our footprint,” said Holmes, once again squatting in the doorway. There was no need for a glass to make it out, clear against the grime of the step.
“Small,” I pointed out. “A woman?”
“Possibly,” Holmes said, rising again, “although the edges regrettably lack the definition required for conclusive analysis.”
“Then what about these?” Tovey said, stepping into the lobby of the abandoned hospital. Sure enough, by the light spilling into the room from the now opened door, many more footprints were clearly visible in years’ worth of dust. The inspector pulled a torch from his pocket and flicked it on, tracing the footsteps back to the bottom of a flight of distinctly rickety-looking stairs.
“Definitely a woman,” Holmes said, following the inspector inside, “and more besides. Inspector, if you would swing your light this way.”
Tovey did so, revealing the imprint of a larger boot. “Looks like a man this time,” he said, “according to the size and tread.”
“Inspector, if I may borrow your torch?” Holmes asked, holding out his hand in anticipation. Tovey handed it over, and Holmes illuminated another set of prints. “That is odd,” he said, crouching on his haunches.
“What is?” I asked, walking over to him.
“The man stood still here,” Holmes explained, showing me the marks in the dust. “See? His feet are at shoulder width.”
“And how is that peculiar?” I enquired. “Other than why anyone would want to linger in such a place like this?”
I am not embarrassed to admit that there was something in this relic of a hospital that unnerved me. It wasn’t the dust motes spinning in the beams of light, or even the distant scrabbling of tiny claws behind the wainscoting. The air simply seemed wrong, as if it held a tang of the unnatural. Ridiculous, of course, and I am certain that Holmes would have dismissed my unease as the overactive imagination of a second-rate novelist, but I felt it all the same.
Attempting to stop myself from shivering, more from apprehension than the damp cold that seemed to pervade the building, I studied more closely the prints that Holmes was examining so diligently. “They look perfectly normal to me, if a little on the large side.”
“But that’s just it, Watson,” he replied. “The size. The right foot is at least three sizes larger than the other.”
I looked more carefully still and could now see the truth for myself.
“So it is, although that is less unusual than one might expect. Why, my wife—”
“Has a larger left foot than her right,” Holmes interrupted. “Of course she does. In eighty per cent of cases the left is larger than the right, but the difference is usually minimal, as in Mrs Watson’s case; a size four on her left and three on the right.”
“If you say so,” I sniffed.
“I do indeed, but the difference between the left and right in these prints is far too pronounced.”
“A false leg, maybe?” Tovey suggested.
“Possibly, yes,” Holmes conceded, standing again.
“Do we know what size shoes Pike took?” I asked.
“I doubt the letter from the privy purse bothered with such detail,” Holmes deadpanned, before pointing up the stairs. “Whoever the prints belonged to, it appears that our mismatched male and his female companion spent most of their time here traversing up and down these steps.”
Holmes swept the torch around the remainder of the lobby. The dust to the side of the stairway was undisturbed, a thick blanket covering the space between us and a number of internal doors, most of which remained shut.
However, as Holmes angled the light to sweep up the staircase, we could clearly see a host of footprints on the steps. Whoever had been here regularly walked up and down the stairs, ignoring the rest of the ground floor.
Gripping hard the handle of my walking stick, I swallowed my nerves, taking the first step.
“Then we had better see what’s up there, had we not?”